Wouldst thou like to live ethically? “Most fears about AI and technology are best understood as fears about capitalism… How capitalism will use technology against us.” — Ted Chiang This quote, from sci-fi writer Ted Chiang (via Ezra Klein’s podcast), gets to the crux of it. The ills we see in tech are a direct result…

Unlearning growth-by-default like our lives depend on it Growth is a dangerous ideology. It’s one that’s taken hold across the globe — in our financial systems, in business, in the internet’s architecture, and in software development. Endless growth is not possible, or desirable, and it’s killing us — emissions related to the internet and its data centers account…

A few working frameworks for PMs, execs, small teams, and startups. — You can’t change what you don’t measure — and measurement is a core challenge of building inclusive products. In this post, we’ll cover micro-level quantitative frameworks for measuring product inclusion and product equity — areas like representativeness, product outcomes, and subjective experience — as well as more macro-level mitigating methods…

Ways to defuse weapons of mass persuasion Software is manipulative and everyone knows it. Companies use various techniques to manipulate users — techniques like gamification, social pressure, ranked content optimized for engagement, etc. — and set these as defaults. Users are give some semblance of control in the form of service agreements and preferences, masking what is…

A case study on averages and margins Marginalized people are often marginalized in datasets. It’s an inversion of what happens IRL: in real life, minorities can’t help but stick out, but in data they’re lumped in with the rest. In data, marginalized people, if they are encoded at all, are often hidden in averages and other aggregate…

Low-cost community tactics for nonprofits and startups Traversing the internet is inherently lonely — it’s just you and a device — and things are doubly lonely during COVID. More and more, organizations are realizing that community can be a big differentiator for their cause or business. Indeed, “community” has become a bit of a buzzword across the…

I can’t stop thinking about this story from December by Documented NY (a nonprofit journalism organization) about how Latinx immigrants are scammed on WhatsApp. It makes for a good case study in how we might apply product inclusion principles. Oftentimes, talking to your most vulnerable users can reveal larger, systemic…

Noom is one of my favorite apps at the moment. It helps people lose weight and eat better, a Weight Watchers for the millennial set. Noom’s effective techniques are backed by research and behavioral psychology. …

Morals ain’t cheap — especially when they require engineering. I love this read on the “Privacy Tax” from The Markup’s EIC Julia Angwin. She defines it as: “the time and money orgs spend building or customizing tools that would be off-the-shelf for other websites.” The Markup is deeply committed to…